Going from Reeder to NetNewsWire

I’ve hopped between different RSS reeders ever since I started using RSS back in 2007.

I was on Windows then and using FeedDemon[1].

Eventually I discovered Google Reader and hooked it up with FeedDemon for syncing across to my Samsung Galaxy, the first smartphone I owned back in 2010.

There were so many different types of RSS readers, my favorite being gReader for Android. It was customizable and easy on the eyes. That was an RSS reader I would stick with until I moved to iPhone in 2014.

2013 and the demise of Google Reader

I don’t need to rehash the seismic shift in the media landscape after Google shutdown Reader. It was devastating for diehard nerds like me and my friends and folks in countries that censored information.

However from the ashes rose my next RSS sync/reader service, Feedly.

The rise of RSS reader sync/apps

I used a lot of them on iOS and iPad. The list:

  • Mr. Reader
  • Fiery Feeds
  • Feedly
  • Lyre
  • Reeder
  • Unread
  • NetNewsWire

I enjoyed all of them for different reasons, but the one I kept returning to was Reeder.

Why? It’s one of the most pleasant and beautifully designed apps I’ve ever used.

Then NetNewsWire came back from the dead.

All the usual Apple pundits raved about it and I gave it a shot.

I disliked it off the bat and went back to Reeder.

A change of reading habits

Ever since Matter came on the scene, allowing you to bring in your newsletter subscriptions into one centralized place, I’ve been looking for a more power user set of reading tools as I’ve decided to ramp up more of my writing content.

That plus Obsidian and Shortcuts on the Mac makes for a great research/writing workflow.

I decided to give NNW a try this past weekend and found that I enjoy it; the interface I found to be too cluttered at first fit right into the new way I consume written media.

What’s next?

I think, for as long as my written media consumption remains the same, NNW is my RSS reader of choice. That may change; nerds are never satisfied with their tools.

We’ll see.

  1. Which I still miss by the way. ↩︎

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